Most Improved Appearance: Jason Segel

How I Met Your Mother is based on the increasingly threadbare premise, eight seasons in, that a man must search out a good woman to redeem him. It's an oddly retro sentiment, conjuring John Wayne's emotionally constipated gunslingers and OCD bacon-eater Jack Nicholson telling Helen Hunt, "You make me want to be a better man." But it's a trope the show gets wrong in one important way: The man doesn't go looking for the good woman; he stumbles upon her, finding redemption where he didn't even know he needed it.

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Monday night's episode of How I Met Your Mother proved that rule, even if it didn't know it. Because a while back, I only knew three things about Jason Segel: He's obsessed with the Muppets; he allegedly spent the night with Lindsay Lohan; and he once fell asleep while eating Taco Bell. Then, last year, Segel starting dating Michelle Williams, the delicate actress so beautiful that when people watched her in My Week with Marilyn, they didn't whisper, "They should have gotten Scarlett Johansson." Whatever Williams is doing, it's working out for Segel, at least evidenced by his appearance on the latest How I Met Your Mother episode. Where had the slovenly Segel gone? Was that combed hair we saw? A lone chin? No more a slob with a waxy pallor and an In-N-Out gut, Segel was transformed into the man we think (oh, we have no idea) Williams deserves. Sure, we're talking superficial changes, but damn if he doesn't look healthy and happy to be on a show that he has long since ceased to be on for any reason other than a paycheck.

Watch Monday's night full episode of How I Met Your Mother on cbs.com.